


Brains enough for two

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 22:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20280850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: All three of Hoster Tully's daughters will marry well - even if little Muriel's path to becoming Lady of the Rock seems blocked by Jaime Lannister's white cloak.Lucky for her that the new King is grateful both to Muriel's father and to Jaime's, then.Luckier still that Muriel has no time for Jaime's seeming endless nonsense, either.





	Brains enough for two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).

> For Elle! I hope you enjoy :D

Cat’s betrothed is taller even than Uncle Brynden, who Muriel thinks  _ must _ be taller than her lord father. Lysa’s betrothed is not as tall as their lord father, but he is broader in the shoulder.

Muriel’s betrothed, she suspects, will look very fine in his white Kingsguard cloak. 

“You’re so  _ stupid,” _ Lysa says when Cat isn’t there to scold her. “He’s in the Kingsguard now, so he can’t marry you. Everyone knows the Kingsguard take no wives.”

“Oh well,” Muriel says, swinging her legs. She still doesn’t wear full-length skirts like Cat’s and Lysa’s, and because she only has to hitch her skirts up from her ankles, she can still climb trees. Her favourite is just inside the gate to the godswood. It has a branch that leaves her just above Uncle Brynden’s head, but not so high that he cannot lift her down. “Father will find me another betrothed then, I suppose.”

Lysa scoffs, but Lysa is always scoffing at Muriel for not understanding things. Cat usually explains, so Muriel decides that she will wait and ask Cat before she begins to worry.

Muriel generally does not worry, though. Cat and their lord father and Uncle Brynden make sure she doesn’t need to.

* * *

Father orders a new gown for Muriel when word comes that Lord Lannister and his eldest son are to visit at Riverrun on their way home from King’s Landing, after the war.

She had a new gown for Cat and Lysa’s weddings only a year ago, but they all need new gowns now. Cat’s bosoms are bigger because of the babe, Lysa’s belly is bigger even though she lost her babe before it was big enough to be born, and Muriel’s taller now than she’s ever been. Her goodbrothers both remarked on how much she’d grown, when they arrived home from the fighting.

Cat’s husband greets her with a smile, and bows to kiss baby Oscar’s head. Muriel likes Arlan very much, and she’s glad that he’s happy both to give up his Mallister colours and to remain here at Riverrun. Seagard seems very far away, and she should hate for Cat to be so far.

Lysa’s husband doesn’t smile so much, but Ned Stark is almost as nice as Arlan, in Muriel’s opinion. He’s only here at Riverrun at all because Lysa was too sick to travel when he sent word that she was to go on ahead to Winterfell, and he’s been very gentle with her amidst all her weeping. Muriel hopes that Lysa is careful and gentle when he weeps, too, because surely he must weep for having lost his father and his brother  _ and _ his sister.

Uncle Brynden said that Muriel mustn’t mention Lady Lyanna though, for her bones are somewhere in Lord Ned’s caravans. Muriel cannot imagine such a horrible thing, and so instead she asks about the babe who cries in Lord Ned’s little entourage, and is told not to ask about  _ him, _ either.

“His name is Jon,” Lord Ned says, when Muriel sneaks into the godswood to ask him. “Jon Snow.”

Muriel hopes that Jaime Lannister, who has reverted from his white Kingsguard cloak to Lannister crimson as a reward for killing the old King, or maybe as a punishment, does not present her with a Jon Waters. She is much too young to be a stepmama.

* * *

Jaime Lannister is taller than Ned Stark, but not so tall as Arlan Mallister. He has a pretty sort of a face, but he looks absolutely furious, the way Lysa gets when she’s in a snit.

Lysa was in a snit before she left for Winterfell, more because she was being brought away before the Lannisters arrived than anything else. She had wanted a fine new gown paid for by their lord father, and a fine feast suitable for hosting Tywin Lannister, and had not been pleased with Lord Ned for denying her both. Even his reminding her that he had to lay his sister’s bones to rest had not quieted her, which had mortified Cat and enraged Father.

Jaime Lannister looks as though he’d much rather be on his way to Winterfell than sitting at Muriel’s side in Riverrun’s high hall. He is here, though, at a fine feast to celebrate the renewal of their betrothal, and brightens only when Uncle Brynden comes to sit with them.

Later, when he’s deep in his cups, he tells her that Cat is the pretty one, and sounds spiteful with it.

“Well, yes,” Muriel says. “But I am only nine.”

That makes him laugh, and he does not seem quite as foul-tempered for it.

* * *

Muriel is twelve when Cat has her second baby. 

Oscar is a jealous little thing, even though at four he should really know better than to think anything could stop his mama from loving him, and so Muriel takes to sitting with Cat in the nursery when she’s nursing sweet Mina, so that Oscar has someone else to climb all over. That’s where she is when her maid comes to fetch her away, because Jaime Lannister has come to visit.

Cat laughs, and says something about  _ pretext _ , and when Muriel bounces off Arlan’s chest in the hallway he laughs too, and says  _ fine excuse, our babe. _ Muriel’s not really minding what they’re saying, and it’s only when she makes it down to the high hall to discover her betrothed surrounded by baby gifts that she understands.

“I hope,” she says, once they’ve given their greetings and he’s kissed her hand, “that there is something among all these chests for  _ me.” _

His smile is becoming handsome rather than pretty, now that he is twenty, and he beckons her closer. 

“My father wishes us to marry within the year,” he whispers, once they are very close. His smile never shifts a hair. “Speak with your father, and delay him - please?”

So far as she understands, most men are eager to wed as soon as they can, but she agrees to speak with her lord father, and speaks with Uncle Brynden first.

“He has a twin sister, little fish,” Uncle Brynden reminds her, “so it might be that he understands a maiden’s fears better than other men would.”

It is agreed within two moons of Jaime’s departure that Muriel and Uncle Brynden will journey to Winterfell, to help Lysa with  _ her _ new babe. Muriel has never left the Riverlands before, and forgets all about Jaime Lannister in her excitement at this journey.

* * *

Muriel is sixteen, and has lived in Winterfell for two whole years and been home for another two, when Jaime Lannister again comes to Riverrun.

Even now that she is old enough to appreciate such things, she cannot quite see why all her friends sigh and swoon at the thought of him. Perhaps it is because she is too curious about the man who spared her a too-early wedding and a far too-early bedding to really worry herself about his face.

He has his father with him, of course, and an uncle, and his little brother as well. Lord Tyrion is much of an age with Muriel, but small, for he is an imp. He bows over her hand and showers her in lavish compliments such as she’s never heard, not even when Arlan is in his cups and singing Cat’s praises just to make her laugh, and Muriel decides that she likes her newest goodbrother enormously.

Lord Tywin greets her with a half-bow and an imperious glance down his straight nose, which she returns fearlessly. Why should she be afraid? She is to be his gooddaughter within the week, after all.

Jaime greets her with a small, cold smile, looking almost as spiteful and sarcastic as he had right after the Rebellion, and she wonders why that is.

* * *

Lysa has not made the journey south for Muriel’s wedding because she is with child again - her third child, hopefully, because she has kept both pregnancies between this and the one she lost during the war, and Muriel is sure that all the candles she and Cat light to the Mother help at least a little, even if Lysa writes to say that she has taken to praying to her husband’s tree gods. Cat comes to help her dress, though, and offers a string of reddish river amber and another of blue Seagard pearls to be threaded through her hair.

“Lysa sent this,” Cat says, drawing a maiden’s cloak from a small trunk. “We sewed it together, she and I, for her wedding, and we thought you might like to wear it as well.”

It is a little short for Muriel, which feels strange - Lysa was no taller than her when she was at Winterfell, but it  _ has _ been two years since last she saw her sister. 

“It is beautiful,” she says. “However can I thank you, Cat? And Lysa?”

Cat rolls her eyes and kisses Muriel’s brow, which means she is being  _ Lady Tully _ . She is doing that more and more lately, as Father gives more of the running of Riverrun over to her care, and Muriel is a little sad for how much less her sister laughs.

* * *

The Lannister cloak around her shoulders is heavier than her Tully cloak was, and her new husband has not spoken a single word to her since they exchanged their vows.

“He’s just being spoiled,” Tyrion confides from behind his cup of honeyed milk. “Our lord father never says no to him, but he said no when Jaime wanted to put off getting married.”

“Does he mislike me?” Muriel asks, fascinated by the thought of a man who does not wish to be married. Don’t all men enjoy being wed? Lysa certainly told her that men like the marriage act, and that’s why Lord Ned has little Jon Snow. Mayhaps Jaime  _ does _ have a Jon Waters, and a lover to go with him. “I can’t imagine why he should.”

Tyrion laughs, and Muriel smiles with him. 

“He mislikes most people,” Tyrion assures her. “Try not to take it personally, sister.”

Now she smiles in earnest.

“I’ve never had a brother before,” she says. “What a nice change, even if my husband proves useless.”

Jaime, sitting on her other side, chokes on his wine. That makes Tyrion laugh harder.

* * *

Cat’s Arlan keeps his hungry-handed nephew away from her during the bedding, but Muriel is still stripped all the way to her bare backside by the time she reaches her bedchamber. 

Jaime is already there, as naked as she is with a cup of wine in his hand. He’s been drinking heavily all day, to the point where his lord father took his cup away from him at dinner, and Muriel has had quite enough of him. He is older than her, almost Cat’s age, but he is behaving as silly and boyish as Patrek Mallister.

“Is there any wine left?” she asks. “Or have you used it all to drown your sorrows?”

He scoffs just like Lysa used when Muriel didn’t understand things, but she has no time for such foolishness. Cat and their lord father both have impressed upon her the importance of making a success of her marriage, especially since Jaime’s sister has given the King a second little prince. Part of that success will be to birth a lion cub of her own, but she cannot do that without at least little help from her husband.

“Go to bed,” he says. “We can talk tomorrow.”

“I’ve no interest in talking to you,” Muriel says. “So far as I’ve been told, there’s no talking involved in what needs doing.”

He keeps his back to her, but she can see him tense. Oh, well. 

“So I shall fix my hair,” she says, “and while I am doing that, you can stir yourself, and we shall manage.” 

Muriel has always aspired to be as sensible as Cat and as forthright as Uncle Brynden. She will need to be as stubborn as Lysa and as stern as their lord father to manage her silly husband, she thinks.

He turns to face her when she scrapes the chair at her dressing table across the floor, and his manhood is smaller than Lysa and Cat told her to expect. Perhaps it will be more impressive when he’s ready for the act itself.


End file.
